


Thermal Flux

by artistfingers



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: (pre) Edward Elric/Winry Rockbell, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dimension Travel, Fort Briggs, Gen, handwavy every science tbqh, handwavy medical science, military!Winry, playing fast and loose with the rules of alchemy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28583898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artistfingers/pseuds/artistfingers
Summary: Winry prided herself on her situational awareness, quick thinking, and high bullshit threshold. Hell, for Colonel Mustang’s team, those qualities were all but requirements. It also meant that she was well-equipped to handle a stranger bleeding out in a blizzard—even with the eerily familiar face, never mind the shoddily alchemizedperforating trauma.But automail built straight from her childhood designs?Well. She might need a slightly higher bullshit threshold after all.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Winry Rockbell
Comments: 20
Kudos: 46
Collections: Delightful Dimension Travel





	1. Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic idea hit me like a sack of bricks, and I couldn’t not write it, and then it became more than 50% of my NaNoWriMo 2020 project XD So, it’s mostly written—I’m still wrapping up the last part and editing the heck out of all of it, and honestly, also rewriting a lot of the middle bits—but I’m trying to be a little less precious about posting, so here’s the first part!
> 
> Some context for this world, which I've dubbed The People’s Mechanic AU:
> 
> Ed and Al don’t exist in Alt!Winry’s world. Her life diverges after her parent’s death in Ishval. Father and the homunculi are off doing non-world-threatening things, so don’t worry about ‘em. or maybe Hohenheim was a lot more on top of things, WHO KNOWS. 
> 
> For Ed, this fic takes place directly after he alchemizes himself down at the bottom of the Baschool mineshaft, BUT I hand-waved away the fact he knew that Central forces had taken Briggs; only Al found out, then headed out by himself to warn the other party. 
> 
> Finally, I’m really playing fast and loose with the rules of alchemy and Truth. I’m running with the idea that transmuting yourself with your own soul as a Philosopher’s Stone is risky business that involves a LOT of luck.
> 
> Check out the end note for a few inspirations!

* * *

Anywhere you go on Amestrian soil, you’ll hear about her: Winry Rockbell, The People’s Mechanic. 

She’s said to be more skilled with a wrench than a surgeon with a scalple. There’s stories about how her smile can light up a room that smells of nothing but antiseptic and dread. Nobody’s ever seen her without a smudge of grease across the bridge of her nose and she’s got way more piercings than military regulation allows; these two you know from grainy newspaper photographs. 

The rest is gossip, but truer gossip has never been spread. The People’s Mechanic never turns down a client, even those with nothing to give back. She uses her research funds—every last cenz, some say—to outfit those in need of automail, no questions asked.

Your sister-in-law told you she’d heard from a friend who’s cousin frequented Rush Valley that Winry Rockbell delivered a baby once, on top of a mountain, during a flood (which is a little more biblical than you think she meant, but it’s far too cool a rumour to discount completely).

Here’s what you’ll learn first-hand when you meet her: she never takes money for repairs, only a warm meal and a bed for the night, and her eyes hold more mischief and compassion than the flat newspaper portraits could ever hope to convey.

You’ll wonder why the military hired a fifteen-year-old engineer, but you won’t look a gift horse in the mouth for long. 

Because Winry Rockbell is the best damn thing that’s happened to this country in decades.

* * *

One foot after the next sinking to the mid-shin in snow, Winry had a realization: she and snowdrifts were not friends, and likely never would be. 

_Especially_ not this blindingly white storm. _Not_ halfway up to Fort Briggs in the middle of winter.

She was bundled three layers deep, but despite that, she was getting shivery; the hike was longer and harsher than she’d anticipated, once the wind kicked up. Even the outermost coat, the one with the furred hood Ms. Riza had insisted she take, had lost approximately a quarter of its potential for warmth, now that it was damp. 

At least her hands had found cozy homes in her armpits.

Her scarf slipped below her chin and she paused to fix it. Just one inhale and the frozen air all but singed her nose, throat, and lungs, worse on the way in. She repressed a cough and squinted at the horizon.

The sky was a blue smear. Against it, Fort Briggs was a blocky black and gray smudge. Still a ways off.

A fresh slap of wind hit her with a renewed vigor, the snowflakes that hit her face like sharp pins. Retreating into her thick scarf, Winry thought she knew what turtles felt like when they hid in the safety of their shells.

“It’s worth it,” she promised herself at a murmur. “It’s worth it.”

And learning northern automail techniques _was_ worth it. After this, she’d be so much better equipped to work with those people from this region, and travelers, and every person who’d benefit from lighter automail; the young, the elderly, pregnant people, those with multiple prosthetics, and the list went on. If she was wiley enough, she might be able to use similar techniques to lighten the weight of her automail by another ten percent, maybe more, if she could optimize her calculations. Some mechanics were already adapting Neil Flint’s regulation systems for the southern heat, too; and that wasn’t even mentioning the things she didn’t even know to think of yet!

She squinted against the blindingly bright snow. That was all true, yes. But, _why_ had this mission been scheduled for winter? Would waiting for spring really have been that bad? Her winters were usually spent in Rush Valley, and they were some of her most productive months out of the year. It had been her CO who’d had other plans.  
  
A few weeks ago, she’d visited Central, a work and social visit all in one, as she was staying with the Hughes family. Reporting in with Mr. Mustang was a given.

He’d taken her reports—all two dozen—but had barely skimmed the neatly written notes and carefully copied blueprints before he looked up at her and said, “Do you know anything about cold climate automail?”

“No, sir.”

“How’d you like to learn?” He set the reports down and reclined in his cushy chair, fingers laced over his chest. He wouldn’t have looked out of place in a sitting room. Somehow, he made the pose look natural in an office, too.

Winry hadn’t even questioned it, though perhaps she should have, at the time. Mr. Mustang wasn’t known for no-strings attached goodwill. “Oh my god, I’d _love_ to! But from who? The only specialists—”

“Are employed at Fort Briggs, yes, I know. Actually, Neil Flint has invited you to do an ‘internship’.”

_“Neil Flint?”_ Winry yelped, loud enough to draw looks from the entire team. She heard a stifled gasp from Fuery, probably the only other person in the entire base who understood the weight that name carried. “You mean _the Neil Flint?”_

“Certainly _a_ Neil Flint.”

“Don’t beat around the bush,” Winry demanded hotly. “Are you talking about the guy who completely reinvented automail temperature regulation systems by synthesizing insulated metal plated alloys to improve specific conductivity _or not?”_

“Ah, yes. Insulators and alloys. That’s the one,” Mr. Mustang replied, infuriatingly lackadaisical.

“Oh my _god,”_ Winry said again, with feeling. “He wants _me?”_

“I take it you’d like to accept the offer?”

“Of _course!”_

“Excellent. Then you’ll be expected at Fort Briggs in three week’s time.”

That was the news that had dampened Winry’s quickly rising mode, and the flurry to get at her notebook and start a packing list stalled out. “But… it’s January?”

The Colonel raised an eyebrow at her. “Yes?”

“It’s the middle of winter.”

“Then you’d better pack warm.”

“I’m expected back in Rush Valley.”

“Make a few calls.” He’d given her a smug little smile. “And learn a lot, Miss Rockbell.”

Infuriating Colonel.

She adjusted the straps of her kit, resettling its weight across her back, and dug her right foot out of the snow only to falter and return it to the dent she’d just wrenched it from. Off to the north-east, there was something red in the otherwise muted gray-white landscape. A gust of wind and generous scattering of snow obscured her vision for a moment, but she stayed, shading her eyes, until it settled. 

Yes, there: a red bundle, low to the ground. It couldn’t be a plant, not that vivid, not in the dead of winter. Was it an animal, bloodied and wounded? Maybe a bear? She’d read that there were a lot of bears in these mountains. Her heart leapt into her throat.

  
She swung her course wide. Off the marked path, the snow was even harder to traverse.

Drawing close, she realized the figure was too small to be a bear; that was a relief. She wouldn’t have known what to do with a wounded bear, honestly. Now, a wild dog or fox or something, _that,_ she could probably figure out. She’d operated on Den with Granny. It couldn’t be that different.

Anxiously, she broke into an awkward, high-knees run. By the time she came to the figure, her scarf had slipped down and her breath was billowing in short white clouds from her chapped lips, until they caught on a small gasp.

“Oh my god.”

Not a bear, not a wild dog, but a _person_ , was laying face-down in a red winter coat, ragged and dirty—and she’d seen enough dried bloodstains to recognize what was glueing the coat to their back. Judging from the tracks, they’d been working their way along more crawl than walk, before collapsing.

They let out a ragged, shaking cough, and struggled to push themselves up, but their arms were unsteady. Winry dropped to her knees to help, hooking her arms around their shoulder and found they were snow soaked and freezing. She wracked her gaze down their front—black clothes made it hard to see the blood, but it was there alright, on their stomach, on the snow beneath them.

“W—Win,” they rasped weakly. Relief and fear played in equal parts over their face, which Winry took in in short order: pale and near bloodless, to the point of being an unsetting mottling of blue and green, with golden-brown eyes, sharp chin, blonde hair, matted with snow and dirt but not blood—no head injury then, thank god.  
  
“What happened?” Winry demanded.

“S...st—stabbed,” they gasped.

“Perforated?” Must be; she’d seen their back.

  
Their eyes flickered, their mouth twisting as they inclined their head: a yes.

“Any first aid?”

“I, I did,” they coughed. “Sealed it.”

She settled them back and tugged at their clothing to get an idea of the wound. It was nasty, bright and bleeding sluggishly, but at least there’d been a stopgap. As they’d said, it had been sealed with—Winry didn’t know what. Not stitches, that was obvious. 

“With alchemy,” they said.

_“Oh,_ you goddamn maddening _alchemists,”_ Winry hissed. 

The stranger made a sound that might have been a laugh. Winry could feel her blood buzzing just below the surface of her wrists. It might have been adrenaline.

Mustang had done this before—used his flames to cauterize a wound. It’d scarred, and scarred _bad,_ it made things _complicated;_ sure, he hadn't bled out, but the risk of infection had more than doubled. Without proper treatment, things would get _ugly._

They were within walking distance to the outer rim, where the guards were expecting her. 

She just had to get them through the last stretch.

Okay. She could do that.

“I’m going to carry you to Fort Briggs, and we’re going to get you into surgery to patch up whatever goddamn mess you’ve made for me.” She shrugged off her automail kit and wrapped the stranger’s wound with her scarf to keep it stable until they got to an operating table. Because they’d alchemized their wound but hadn’t thought to alchemize a _bandage._

Stupid, crazy _alchemists._ They all had death wishes. 

“You’re going to stay awake. You’re gonna keep talking to me. You hear me?”

She glanced up to their face, trying to confirm, and found them looking at her ear.

“I _said—”_

“Y, your… earrings,” they mustered.

Winry felt a flushing hot burst of frustration. “I’m trying to save your life here!” She yanked on her kit’s straps and pulled it back on, lower to accommodate the new load. “Grit your teeth. I’m picking you up.”

“Wh—” they started, but the rest was a strangled vocalization of pain as Winry hefted them across her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. They didn’t resist, clearly knowing what was good for them. Good _god,_ they were heavy. Muscle? Or did they have automail?

A fresh wave of panic hit Winry’s gut. They were freezing cold and soaking wet; she couldn’t make out whether anything beneath the fabric was flesh or metal. It all felt the same.

To understate: that was worrying.

Her high steps jostled her passenger, but after the first few feet, they stopped gasping with each move; she was reassured they were alive only by the huffs of unsteady breath against her neck.

“Hey,” she said. “Talk to me. Details.”

  
There was a long stretch of silence before they responded.

“Fell,” they said. “In… into a mineshaft.”

“Mineshaft,” Winry repeated at a mutter. “Minesh—? Oh. Baschool.” She’d studied the maps. They’d crawled here all the way from _Baschool?_

An exhale. “Yeah.”

“Fell,” she repeated next, unabashedly skeptical.

She felt their wince. “More l-like… exploded.”

“What the— _exploded?!”_

“Fuckin’... Kimblee.” The words were sour, and presented as though they constituted a complete explanation.

She was quiet, aside from her panting as the march continued, drawing them ever nearer to the fort. Kimblee—she knew that name. She’d studied more enough about the Ishvalan War to recognize it. “Kimblee is locked up.”

“I _wish.”_

Well, she couldn’t focus on that worrying sentiment. “Okay, fine. Your injury. Give me more details on _that.”_

“Right,” they coughed, much louder than they’d been talking, and Winry winced but didn’t let her pace slow. Speaking seemed to take them great effort, but they worked through the next few sentences like one might haul themselves over a wall. “S—sorry. It was metal. Beam. Pulled it o, out. I jury-rigged... a working system. Stopped the bleeding. For a while.”

_“What_ does that mean, exactly?”

They didn’t reply. Their next inhale was ragged.

“Hey! I need to know! What organs—”

Another catching breath. They’d passed out abruptly, head lolling at an awkward angle against her shoulder.

She clenched her teeth and picked up the pace.

* * *

The stranger’s surgery was an intense, messy affair which Winry was privy to only because she demanded that she be involved. And it was a good thing she had, too; they’d had to detach not one, but _two_ automail limbs in an attempt to help him regulate his own body temperature.

Neil, after a rushed introduction, had taken over the leg and tasked Winry with the arm. Brigg’s resident doctor, Pat (also a rushed introduction; Winry hadn’t even caught her last name), looked grim behind her mask when she announced they’d have to open the wound back up to stitch things _properly._

With only the three of them, it was a long and arduous task. When Winry and Neil started getting underfoot, Pat shouted them out of the room, red faced and stressed; Neil retreated sheepishly, but Winry stayed until Pat deflated and told her, in no uncertain terms, that she looked dead on her feet and the last portion of the surgery would be better off without her.

It was late by the time Winry had washed up and collected her haphazardly discarded belongings. She’d just realized she had no idea where she’d be sleeping when Neil pressed a hot coffee into her scrubbed raw hands.

“Here. This’ll steady you.

  
She shot him a grateful smile and took a sip; it was hot and sweet, more cream than coffee. But sugar was just as welcome as caffeine. “Thanks.”

Neil slurped his noisily. He’d found a clean bandanna since she’d last seen him; this one was black and red. “This wasn’t exactly how I expected to quiz you on port handling, you know.”

“You were going to _quiz_ me?”

Neil shrugged. “Never had an intern before. I almost don’t know what to do with you.”

“I don’t think interns take quizzes.” Winry laughed.

Neil narrowed his eyes, playful. “You’re just trying to get out of it, aren’t you?”

“You caught me.” Winry rolled her eyes. Then, realizing that this was _Neil Flint,_ automail _rockstar,_ who had offered to _mentor her_ for _three months_ apropos of _nothing,_ she scrambled to course correct. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding! I’ll take any quizzes you want me to!”

But Neil was grinning. “Nah, no quizzes. It’s an honor to teach you ‘bout my little corner of the automail world, Miss Mechanic of the People.”

“Oh, please,” Winry said, face flushed with embarassment. She valiantly resisted the urge to hide behind her coffee. “I don’t really like that title.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just… so much,” Winry scrunched her nose. “I don’t help people for _fame,_ you know?”

Neil considered her thoughtfully, arms crossed and hip propped against the counter. “No, you do it ‘cause it’s the right thing,” he said, decisive. “And a good thing you do, too. Otherwise, Red would be wolverine meat right now.”

The stranger—who they’d taken to calling Red, after the coat, for lack of anything else—was separated from them by a tightly sealed door. Winry couldn’t prevent her gaze from skittering over as Neil talked; she knew _why_ Pat had kicked her out, respected it, even, but it still rankled. Red was _her_ patient, despite following absolutely none of the conventional methods.

Neil caught her looking and gestured over with his mug. “So, the kid. You _really_ just found him out in the snow? Laying there?”

“Crawling, actually. Or… trying to.”

“Damn,” Neil drained the dredges of his coffee and replaced the mug with a chewed cigarette. (“Can’t smoke in here,” he’d told Winry, forlorn, when he squeezed it out of the pack. “Pat’s tyrannical laws.”) 

She’d already recounted Red’s story for both of them, during the tense automail removal. Neil had sent it up the chain of command when Pat banished him from the operating room, and apparently, Briggs worked fast; an investigation team had already reported back that Baschool and its mines were intact, no trace of an explosion, a fight, or even collapse due to disrepair. Neil told her that now.

“So where _did_ he crawl from?” Winry muttered.

“The storm covered up the trail, so they can’t track anything,” Neil shrugged. “Maybe he was just too proud to say he lost a fight with a grizzley.”

“You think a _bear_ did that to him?” Winry couldn’t keep the skepticism out of her tone.

“You’ve never met a Briggs bear.”

“And I don’t want to!” Winry huffed. “He said he was _stabbed._ That’s not a word you use for a wild animal.”

“A bar fight, then.”

  
“A bar _where?”_ Nevermind the fact that Red didn’t look old enough to set foot in a bar, let alone fight a drunkard. “That doesn’t add up with what he said about _falling._ And what about the Kimblee… thing?”

“Nobody can make heads or tails of _that._ The Crimson Alchemist is rotting in his Central cell as we speak.” Neil leaned in like they were conspiring. “Major Armstrong called _personally.”_

Okay, Winry had already known that Red’s story was missing a few pieces but this was just confusing. She shook her head.

Neil leaned back. “Don’t worry about it too much. We’ll get a straight story out of him when he’s up and about. For now, let me show you to your room.”

The walk was surprisingly short; a few turns down wide white-paint-and-metal halls, her quarters awaited. Neil pointed out his room, and Pat’s, all in the same hallway. She could knock if she ever needed them off the clock, Neil said. 

“And if we’re not in, try the break room.” That’s where they’d had coffee. “Everything else, I’ll show you on the official tour tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Mr. Flint.”

“Mr. Flint? Oh, now _that_ makes me feel old.” He pulled a disgruntled face, unlit cigarette wobbling. “Just use my first name.”

“Got it.” The exhaustion of the day hit her all at once, heavy across her shoulders; it was uncomfortably reminiscent of Red’s dead weight and reminded her of the ache in her back and legs. “Thanks again, Neil. Have a good night.”

“You too, Winry.” Neil began to turn but paused. “Hey, you know what they say about strays?”

“...what?”

“Don’t get too attached,” Neil laughed, then ducked off with a wave.

  
Winry huffed. _Don’t get too attached._ Like she hadn’t been loving and letting go of patients—of _people—_ her whole life.

She’d left her automail kit in the workroom, so she only had her personal bag when she shouldered her way into her new room. 

There wasn’t much to unpack; some clothing, the essential toiletries, and a handful of books and notebooks. It was what she’d packed for Central, when that’s all she’d thought the trip would be. Her winter coat and scarf had been gifts from Miss Riza and the Hughes family.

After folding her clothes into a drawer, she stacked her books on the bedside table, scooted her two pairs of shoes into a line by the door, and then settled in to get some sleep. 

She wasn’t able to rest for long; after a few hours, she found herself awake in the dark, thinking about Red. Surely, he’d be out of the precarious post-surgery state by now? Maybe she should check, just to ensure nothing unexpected had happened…

It didn’t take more than that to convince herself. She shoved her feet into her sandals in the dark and traced her way back to the infirmary in her pajamas, where Pat let her in without any questions. 

Pat looked like she hadn’t even tried to rest. Her coat was wrinkled and her glasses had been pushed to the top of her head; her short blonde hair was sticking out on the left, like she’d run a hand through it one too many times. 

Winry glanced to the door to the operating room, ajar and dark, before realizing Red had been moved to the infirmary bed. The curtains were drawn around him. “How is he?” 

“He’s got an infection,” Pat said curtly. “The fever’s only going up, but we can’t give him the fever reducer without risking a clot, so we’re monitoring him over night.”

Winry worried her lower lip between her teeth. “Mind if I stay?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Behind the privacy curtains, Red was more lump than person, sedated and feverish. He’d been stripped of two limbs and liberated of his bloody clothing, and was now swaddled in only a thin gown and scratchy blankets. He was sweating through all of them, even the cold compress on his forehead, a poor attempt at temperature regulation. It was the same temperature as his fevered skin when she peeled it off.

He’d _alchemized_ his own _impalement_ wound. Of _course_ he was running a fever right after surgery. God, he hadn’t even disinfected it, and who knew what he’d been stabbed with? It was a nightmare just imagining what kind of bacteria he’d sealed inside the wound when he _jury-rigged_ it. Really, Red was lucky to _just_ have an infection and fever. Winry restrained a frustrated sigh as she returned with a fresh rag and a bowl of ice and water to fix a new compress.

“Winry,” he rasped.

  
She jumped, sloshing icy water over her hand. _“Shit!”_

Red was just barely awake, face flushed and eyes too shiny, little splashes of white and gold and black receding into his face. They flickered, trying to focus on her. “R’you okay?”

“Fine, sorry.” She wiped her hands on her front.

“Wh’rs Al?”

She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead, uncertain of what he was asking. He was burning and damp, a stark contrast to the soaking, bone-chilling condition she’d found him in. “Don’t worry. Go back to sleep.”

“But…”

“It’s fine, I promise. Everything is fine.” When that still didn’t do the trick, she added, “We can talk in the morning.”

And, the way that delirious patients rarely did, he caved, expelling his tension and confusion in a single exhale that relaxed his entire body into the mattress. He stirred when she laid the new cold compress across his forehead and eyes, but didn’t wake.

Strays, huh.

She dragged a chair over and wrapped herself in a spare blanket to stave off the chill that seemed to permeate Briggs before taking a moment to study her patient more closely than before.

Red was _young,_ probably around her age, his cheeks still round with unshed baby fat, but battered despite his youth. It wasn’t just the grievous wound they’d stitched. He was littered with scars and scrapes, some old and pale, some new and bright. Beneath the gown, he was more yellowing bruises than healthy flesh. And that wasn’t even touching on the fact he was missing two pretty important limbs. 

(Not that any limb was _un_ important; that was a core tenant for automail mechanics like herself. Still, she entertained herself for a while, considering what body part might be least essential. The appendix, maybe? She couldn’t find an argument for anything else, but that was hardly a limb.)

But it begged the question: what happened in his life, that he needed not just one, but _two_ pieces of automail? 

And forget that, what could’ve hurt him so badly that _Briggs_ was the best place to crawl for help? 

  
All together, Red was a list of unanswered questions in the approximate size and shape of a teenager, and on top of that, there was something that had been nagging at her since she first saw his face, pale in the snow, from the sweep of his jaw to the upturned curve of his nose: she just couldn’t shake the cobwebby feeling that she should _know_ him.

* * *

Winry woke. For a moment, she was disoriented; shouldn’t she be at a desk, face-down amongst wires and bolt cutters? Instead, her head was pillowed on her arms on—a mattress? And the rest of her was folded like a paperclip into a stiff chair, like—

It came back to her. Red, the Briggs infirmary. 

Sitting up jostled something at her elbow: Red’s fingers curling gently into her sleeve. She eased them off, then hesitated with his hand in hers. There was just something at the edge of her mind, like a sense of deja-vu not quite pulled into focus.

Winry shook her head. She wasn’t fully awake, that must be it.

She covered a wide yawn and stood, pulling her borrowed blanket more tightly around herself. A peek through the curtains showed that Pat was still at her desk, half-asleep but making a valiant effort at staying upright. Her desk lamp was the only light in the infirmary.

Red’s temperature was still high, and even his hand had been overwarm, so while she was up she fetched another new cold compress. When she returned, Red’s expression was twisting, sour. A bad dream?

She smoothed back his bangs and draped the new compress on. His eyes flew wide, his breath stuttering and panicky.

“Hey, hey, Red, it’s okay,” Winry said, dropping easily into her bedside manner. Her voice alone was like a soothing balm, and Red’s smile when he focused on her was genuine, though fuzzy, wobbly from the painkillers. Winry helplessly returned it. “You with me?”

“‘Ey, Win,” he rasped, reaching out. He didn’t get far before his face went creased and confused again. Uncertain, he looked at the empty spot on his right. “Y’took my arm.”

Winry made an effort to speak quietly, for Pat’s sake. “We had to detach it, but we’ll have it back on before you know it.”

“Where’s my arm?” His brow was furrowed with the concentration it took to unstick each word from the next. He struggled to prop himself on his one existing elbow and Winry angled his pillow so he could kinda-sorta sit up. 

“All your automail is in the workshop right now. Just through that door.”

Red’s expression shifted in surprise. “M’leg _too?”_

“Yup.”

“Goddamn,” he said fuzzily, patting at his stump. “Ow.”

Winry wrestled a laugh down to a giggle. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Why’sat?”

“Huh?”

“Take’m off?”

“Oh. Even cold climate models are _metal._ They can’t always protect against frostbite, not in conditions like that storm you were in. You’ve also lost a lot of blood. Without proper circulation, the risks of leaving them on were too high.”

“Huh,” Red said, still kneading at his port where flesh became metal through the blanket. “But it w’s so light. I was so fast.”

“How much did your _old_ automail weigh?”

Red peered at her unsteadily, listing to the right. “You tell me.”

She frowned, considering Red’s size and the age of his ports, when he must’ve gotten his original models, and the fact that making automail _lighter_ than what they could do with cold climate models was still an experimental area. “Twenty-five or thirty pounds on the arm. Sixty on the leg? No, it’s only to the mid-thigh. Maybe fifty.”

“Dunno,” Red said.

Winry wasn’t sure why she’d expected any kind of confirmation or correction. “Well, it’s good your new ones are lighter. Using something more than twice the weight of your real limbs can cause a lot of problems, especially while you’re growing.”

“You calling me short?” Red asked, like he couldn’t believe it.

“No, I’m just saying... you’re… fifteen?”

Red snorted. “Well, whatev’r. Heavier shit punches harder. But even with the new stuff, when you fall, y’fall _hard.”_ He said this like it was sage wisdom, complete with a nod and all. When Winry’s non-response disappointed him, he urged, “Ask me how I know, Win.”

“Um, how do you know?”

“Aside from _Baschool…”_ Red started in on a list of names of people and places, expecting Winry to keep up. 

She didn’t, just furrowed her brows until his eyes landed on her. 

“What? Y’should be glad I didn’t break y’r _precious_ arm this time.”

Had he just threatened her with bodily harm? “Please don’t break _anything,_ Red.”

“I don’t try to! Things just break in my vicinity. A lot.”

“Like… mineshafts.”

_“Right.”_

“Why didn’t you go to town for help? It’s a lot closer to Baschool than the fort. If I hadn’t come along, you’d have never even reached the gate.” 

“D’n wanna go t’the Gate...”

“Then what?”

“What?”

“The town was _closer,_ Red.”

He blinked at her. “But _you_ were here.”

“That was pure _luck!”_

“Mmm… nah. _Strategy.”_

_“Strategy?”_ Winry repeated, patience wearing thin enough to snap. “Strategy my _ass!_ You wouldn’t know strategy if it hit you upside the head! How many hours were you out in the storm like that, anyway? You’re lucky we _only_ had to detach your automail! You could’ve lost a whole lot more to frostbite and contamination!”

“What’s a few fingers?” Red asked, laughing again. “Already down… five.” He held up his left hand and peered at it. “Five down, five t’go.” He trailed off with a distracted mumble, eyes narrow.

Winry groaned and twisted around to look at Pat, who’d been drawn over by the argument that Winry had failed to keep quiet, and was now standing at the gap in the curtains, shoulders shaking with repressed laughter. 

“What’d you _give_ him?”

“The good stuff.”

Winry crossed her arms. “Must be pretty damn good.”

_“You’re_ pretty,” Red said, rousing with an uneven grin. _“And_ pretty damn good. Good at whatcha do. No, better’n that. Way better.”

“Say that again when you’re fully cognizant, and maybe I’ll believe you,” Winry huffed.

“I will,” Red said, rather pleased with himself. And then he passed out unceremoniously.

Pat snorted and shook a hand through her short hair, making it stick out even worse than before. “Let’s take his example and hit the hay.”

  
Winry frowned at Pat, then at Red’s slack face. “Doesn’t he need to be under observation?”

“Yeah, as for that…” Pat’s response was wry. “I think it’s time Neil took a shift.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspirations:
> 
> 1\. a ton of talk of BH + 03 fusion (IE, BH-characters-dream-of-’03) on @ruinsofxerxes’ blog ([here-ish](https://ruinsofxerxes.tumblr.com/archive/2020/11/filter-by/ask)), which really got me into a dimensional bleed kinda mood
> 
> 2\. Anthrop’s fics; specifically, “[where our design has failed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27171334)” for sticking a bug in my ear about Baschool/Briggs/things go wrong with Ed’s self-transmutation. And “[hold your heart courageously](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13201515)”, for spurring me to write down “Winry-centric adventure” on my fanfic wishlist all those months ago
> 
> and, 3. I can’t NOT mention Presume’s [FMA fics](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882300). They’re just so fun, and really made me want to work on short(er) fics. (and I say shorter, because this, clearly, did not turn out short, haha).
> 
> See y’all soon!


	2. Part 2

* * *

It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise, given the way they’d met, but there was no such thing as a  _ ‘quiet morning’ _ with Red around. Case in point: when Winry walked into the infirmary the very next day, she was just in time to witness him face-planting off the bed.

Pat was nowhere in sight as Winry winched Red off the floor, lifting him more easily than yesterday. She felt a little bad that it was because he was missing half his limbs. 

But only a little bit. The rest of her was furious.

“What do you think you’re  _ doing?” _

“Geddoff me!” Red hissed. It came out like a demand that had gotten lost somewhere along the way, the impact lessened by his pink-faced flailing. 

Winry disregarded his attempts to get on steady footing amid the tangled blankets, and after a cursory check that his nose wasn’t broken, dumped him back in bed. “Stay.”

“I gotta  _ piss.” _ He was steadily turning the same shade as the coat she’d found him in. Fever abd embarrassment were certainly a powerful combination.

“I’ll get you a bedpan, and you’ll like it,” Winry said. 

“No I  _ will not—” _

_ “Stay.” _

After that, she found Pat in the break room and gave her an earful about leaving a delirious patient unattended, nevermind a delirious patient with  _ one leg and an IV line in. _ Pat had the wherewithal to look abashed before they simultaneously realized that Red was currently alone, unsupervised.  _ Again. _

The ensuing mad dash ended with Winry dumping Red back into bed for a second time in less than twenty minutes, only this time, he’d made it far enough to pull a third of the privacy curtains off their rails in his fall, and had taken to raving about Al.

“Don’t worry about Al,” Winry said, a hand planted firmly on Red’s shoulder to keep him in place while Pat redid his IV.

Red winced sourly and averted his gaze from Pat’s hands. “Y’r gonna pay for this, Win.”

“Don’t forget to itemize the bill.”

_ “Bills,” _ he grouched. “Gonna bleed me dry.” Then, the solution worked its swift chemical magic and sent his eyelids fluttering. 

Winry let up as Pat taped off the line. “This isn’t the first time he’s brought up Al. Did that search party find anything?”

“If they’d found anybody else out there, we’d be the first to know,” Pat said. “We’d be treating them.”

Winry sighed, watching Red drift further. “Hey, do you think it’s weird that he knows my name?”

“You’re  _ the People’s Mechanic,” _ Pat said, announciating it like a proper noun.

“Yeah, but…” She’d never encountered a stranger who so readily called her by her first name; it was usually  _ ‘Miss Rockbell’, _ unless the stranger was military, in which case it was the way they printed her name in the papers, ‘ _ Special Sergeant Rockbell’,  _ until she said otherwise. Red had skipped all that entirely. “He’s called me  _ ‘Win’ _ this whole time.”

“Maybe he’s just like that,” Pat replied absently, double-checking the new IV bag before discarding the old one. “Plus, he seems to like you.”

“I yelled at him in the middle of the night!” Winry dropped into the chair that was quickly becoming  _ her _ chair, by virtue of her being Red’s only visitor.

“And you were charming the whole time.”

Winry wrinkled her nose. “Charming?”

Pat tried (and failed) to cover a large yawn. “Winry, you saved his  _ life. _ I think that’s reason enough.”

“Anyone would’ve done it.”

Pat shrugged and swept the curtain aside. “Well, not everyone would’ve succeeded.”

The sedative proved Red willing and able to sleep through the rest of the morning, so after watching him sweat and mumble anxious fragments for half an hour, Winry reluctantly allowed Neil to (re)kickstart her internship with a tour of the fort. 

It was a mildly terrifying experience due to the fort’s sheer size and an impromptu introduction to General Armstrong. But any residual jitters evaporated when they made it back to the workshop, where Neil presented her with her own workbench. Her kit was already settled comfortably on the worktop like it belonged there, and nestled alongside it was what could only be described as a true slab of a book on systems theory.

Upon flipping through the first few pages, she found it wasn’t a book at all, actually, but a collection of heavy-duty research papers, and _oh my god she’s been wanting to read this study on specific heat capacity and thermal resistance for ages—_

Neil must have misinterpreted her wide-eyed look of excitement for one of horror. “Relax. I’ve marked the relevant stuff. You don’t have to read it all.” 

And if  _ that _ wasn’t a fundamental misunderstanding of Winry on Neil’s part, he’d be finding out soon.

Sure enough, Winry surfaced later that morning, hand cramping from scribbling copious notes. She hadn’t registered it at the time, but once Neil had accepted the fact that he’d have to wait for her to emerge on her own time, he’d migrated to his own bench. That was where he was seated now, a pair of magnifying goggles discarded around his neck as he cleaned dirt and blood out of Red’s automail. 

That drew her over as she ran through a set of wrist stretches. Getting her first good look at Red’s automail gave her a startling sensation, like cold water drumming down her back: bracing, but after a moment, pleasant, too. She frowned. The spots Neil had already gone over were stood out, a stark bright silver, but nothing else seemed out of place.

“Red’s a lucky bastard,” Neil said, beckoning for Winry to sit with him. “He should be thankful to be alive. The amount of blood in this hand alone could probably fill a pint glass, and that’s not even accounting for what was on his clothes.”

“I doubt he’d credit luck,” Winry said. “Maybe alchemy.”

Red’s leg was significantly cleaner than his arm, but Winry couldn’t say if that was Neil’s doing or if it had been in better shape to begin with. Its main issue was the knee, which could be attributed to Red crawling through the unforgiving tundra. Even still, its range of motion was impressive; the joint slid with a quiet whirr, clicked softly into place at full extension, and easily released when she bent it back. She couldn’t help a low whistle; it functioned like new despite the beating it had taken.

“Elbow, wrist and ankle are like that too,” Neil said, reaching for a new tool. “Haven’t tested out the fingers and toes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re fully rigged. I’m planning to diagram the knee before we gotta give it back.”

“Let’s hope it’s not trademarked,” Winry laughed. “Geeze, I’ve  _ got _ to see it in action. How high d’ya think Red can jump?”   
  


“I’ll put money on two feet.”

“Yeah, how much?” Winry asked. She carefully unscrewed a few casing pieces and set to scrubbing out the grime. 

“Twenty-four cenz.”

“Oh, that’s nothing. No deal.”

“What? That’s a cenz for every inch!”

Winry rolled her eyes. Pulling open Red’s leg shed some light on why they moved like new: it  _ was _ new. In fact, it couldn’t be more than a few weeks old, by Winry’s rough estimate. 

She frowned down the exposed pieces of the knee joint, its deceptive simplicity. Staring into the depths of this machinery was like stumbling through an early morning fog in Resembool; she knew something was there, even if she couldn’t quite locate it—the rickety fence at the far edge of the Rockbell property, maybe, or past it, that white house that had been built and abandoned long before Winry had begun to form memories.

But where she had a mental map of Resembool for those fogged-out mornings, with Red’s automail, she had none, only blank spot that something tugging in her gut said should be filled.

* * *

The next week moulded Winry’s days into a pattern of roughly five parts: reading, automail work, helping with Red, eating, and sleeping—mostly in that order. The last two tended to seep into the other three, but then again, Winry had always lived her entire life at her bench.

Meanwhile, Red got worse before he got better. 

Pat failed to get his real name or any semblance of a medical history out of him as his fever soared. What conversation they  _ did _ manage was the incomprehensible stuff of fever dreams—talk of a brother (who Winry quickly connected to the name Al), questions about Kimblee, and murmurs of Baschool and explosions and making sure someone (apparently named  _ Bastard) _ heard about it and paid tenfold.

Then, of course, another frequent topic of Red’s: Winry herself.

“He’s asking for you again.” Pat hooked her thumb over her shoulder as Winry and Neil stumbled back in from lunch on what Winry was half-way certain to be Tuesday.

“Ah, your secret admirer strikes again,” Neil said.

“What’s the secret?” Winry muttered, course-correcting towards Red’s bed. She was still smarting at how Neil had locked the workshop door behind them when they left. He’d claimed it would stay that way until she’d eaten something, clearly ignoring the fact that she _hadn’t_ forgotten breakfast this time.

At least he hadn’t confiscated her reading.  _ That _ would’ve warranted retaliation.

“Until we can ID him, his identity is technically secret,” Pat said.

“Really, still no leads?” Neil asked.

  
“There’s no talk in town about a missing kid, so…”

Winry ignored them. Peering through the curtains revealed Red, sweating and mumbling through uncomfortable dreams. 

He stirred as she sat down and squinted vaguely in her direction. “S’at Bastard calling me? Tell him to fuck off a’ready.”

“You got it.” They’d found it easiest to play along when Red got confused. On the first day alone he’d shouted himself hoarse, and on the second day after a particularly sticky argument with Pat about a tunnel she was supposed to know about, he’d climbed out of bed again—a stunt that had earned him a fresh bruise on his chin. “Did you need something, Red?”

“Huh?”

“Pat said you wanted me.”

“I did?”

“Did you?”

“Dunno.” Red groaned. “Shit, put me out of my misery, Win. Just zap me with something or…  _ something.” _

“Try to sleep. It’ll help.”

“Bullshit. M’ _ sick _ of sleeping.” He squirmed, scowled, and flopped back against his pillow with a groan. “Are y _ ’sure _ Bastard’s not hounding me? I  _ swear _ he’s bein’ smarmy.”

“If he is, that’s not your problem right now.”

“But it  _ will _ be, eventually. He’d ask my headstone for a report. Fuckin’ gimme a break, old man. Report your damn self if it matters so fuckin’ much.”

Winry tilted her head at him. He was confused, but still more coherent than she’d seen over the last few days. “Old man, huh? What, is he your dad?”

Red spluttered a laugh, gasping into a wheezing no man's land somewhere between mirth and physical pain. “My  _ dad?  _ Fuck! Good one, Win. Say that to his face. He’ll be  _ horrified.” _

Too bad; she’d thought it was a fair assumption, with how much he talked about his brother. Then again, there was a reason she hadn’t made her career in Investigation. She still couldn’t fight off a giggle. “Okay, I’ll bring it up first thing when I see him.”

“Good,” Red said. “Take a picture. Wha’sat make the Lieutenant, my mom? Oh, shit. Bastard n’ the Lieutenant?  _ Gross. _ Gotta scrub  _ that _ outta my brain forever.” He rubbed at one eye with his knuckles, before spotting Winry’s book and pointing at it. “What’cha reading?”

She passed it over. Red squinted at the cover as if the fever and drug cocktail were imparing his vision, but once he’d deciphered it, he snorted. 

_ “Collected Discussions: Perioperative Thermoregulation Systems in Automail Limbs and Designing for Biomechanical Compatibility…  _ Y’only ever think about automail, huh?”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“I bet you dream in blueprints.”

Maybe  _ sometimes, _ but only if she’d been cramming the stuff up to her eyeballs for three consecutive all-nighters beforehand. “I bet  _ you _ dream in dangerous life-risking alchemy!” she shot back.

“Only on a good night.”

“You’ve got no room to talk!” She thumped Red’s forehead with the book.

He pushed it away. “What was  _ that _ weak shit? You’re holding back!”

“You want me to whack you for real?”

“You’re goin’ soft on me!”

“You’ve got a fever that could burn a house down!”

_ “So, _ waiting ‘til I’m better? Crafty. Should’a known.”

Winry glowered. Red matched her glare for a while, but soon gave up with a wince and a grunt that might’ve been about a headache.

Winry tucked her book under her arm and stood. “Go back to sleep.”

He peered at her, groggy. “Bullshit. You just want to get back to your precious automail.”

She stuck her tongue out. “And if I do?”

“Can’t expect anything less from a gearhead.” He faked a sigh—an artform he’d perfected. “I’ll never measure up to a crowfoot wrench, will I?”

“Aww, don’t say that, Red. I’d take you over a crowfoot wrench any day.” He started to smile. Winry tapped her chin. “Now,  _ two _ crowfoot wrenches…”

He groaned. “Cruel woman, trading me for  _ two wrenches!” _

_ “Two wrenches _ would go to sleep when I told them to.”

“That’s stupid. They can’t sleep. They’re inanimate—”

“If  _ you’re _ not inanimate in ten seconds, so help me—”

_ “Ten seconds?  _ Who on the goddamn planet can fall asleep in ten seconds?”

“Ten.” Winry did her best to loom over Red’s bed. “Nine.”

“I can’t sleep if you’re  _ threatening me!” _

“Eight!”

“Alright,  _ alright!  _ Look, I’m sleeping!”

“Oh,  _ real _ funny. Seven!”

“Just knock me out, why don’t you!”

_ “Well, _ don’t mind if I do!”

Neil stuck his head out of the workshop. “Oi, Winry, you’re  _ my  _ intern, not Pat’s!”

Winry turned her ire on him without missing a beat. “Then maybe you shouldn’t lock me out of the workshop!”

“It was  _ one hour! _ For  _ lunch!” _

“Still counts!”

“So you  _ don’t _ want to dissect an M1912-V?”

“Ugh!” She  _ did _ want to dissect an M1912-V. “Sorry, Red. I’ll be back later.”

But Red was looking more befuddled than when he’d first stirred a few minutes ago and started asking about the Bastard. “Whazzat?  _ Internship?” _

Winry tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Right—it’s not really public knowledge, is it? Neil offered to train me on northern automail for a few months.”

“He did? Wow, Winry. Internships left n’ right. That’s great.”

“Isn’t it?” She grinned, an effortless full-wattage, before the urge to reach out to Red knotted in her chest: he was smiling back, but it wasn’t reaching his eyes.

“No safer place to be ‘n inside Briggs… right?” he said.

“Right. Not if the General has any say,” Winry said. “Okay, get some sleep. For  _ real _ this time.” 

She drew the curtains around his bed and trailed Neil into the workshop. Only after she and Neil had tackled the M1912-V and found dinnertime approaching did she unearth Red’s pieces where they lay inert and tantalizing on a disused workstation—the desire to check them out again had been nagging her all week, today least of all.

Pulling up the tarp, Winry reached for that mental map instinct told her should be there, but still came up empty.

No matter how closely she’d scoured the metal inside and out, she couldn’t determine their origin. And neither could Neil, for that matter; even with Winry’s travel and Neil’s decades of experience, they could only speculate. 

“I’ve been making calls,” Neil said, settling down across from her as she dug for a pen in the blueprints discarded on the worktop. So many had piled up that they even half-covered the workshop phone.

“Any luck?”

“Nope. But a few shops I’ve spoken to said they’d check their older records.”

True to Winry’s initial estimate, they’d figured the pieces weren’t more than a month old. On top of that, it was obvious they were custom-ordered northern models. Winry frowned. “So we’re looking for a private party?”

“Mhmm. And not necessarily in this region.”

“That leaves seventy-five percent of the country,” Winry complained, finally locating a pen. She pulled the cap off her pen with her teeth and flipped to a notebook page that wasn’t too crammed.

“I’m starting to think they were a rush order, too. That would account for the fact they’re not stamped.” Neil unwrapped a sucker. He popped it into his mouth before dangling the bag in front of Winry. After a moment’s deliberation, she chose a red one.

A rush order from a freelancer—without a signature stamp, they’d never track down the engineer without a name or a number from Red. That was a problem, and not just because Winry was champing at the bit to pick the brain of the person who’d designed Red’s pieces. The automail was currently their only lead on notifying Red’s loved ones that he was safe.

“At this rate, we might as well wait,” she sighed, trailing her fingers down the bicep casing. 

“Guess we’ll have to.”

“These are really beautiful pieces. They’re the polar opposite of combat models.”

“Don’t like your specialty?”

“No, no! I love it, but… it’s a different kind of elegance, you know?”

“Yeah. Way more analogous to human anatomy than stuff like Bucc’s Crocodile.”

Winry flattened her palm against the metal one in front of her. They were just about the same size; she’d held Red’s hand the first night they’d been here, and it had been a comfortable fit. She aligned her fingertips to the five fingerprint pressure pads. They had a satisfying, if slight, give. 

“Red’s probably got finer motor control in his right pinky than ninety percent of the things I’ve built,” Winry said wistfully, turning back to her notebook, sketch growing one steady line at a time. While Neil had spent the week diagramming Red’s leg, she’d been studying the mechanisms in his am with special attention to the hand. 

The hand in her notebook was open like a flower to the sun. Suddenly, Winry realized something: what it had been all week, emerging from that Resembool-like fog, just ahead: the way that, in Resembool, one step to the next, that  _ something  _ was a house, with a roof, windows, gutters, and a wide front door painted pale green.

Red’s automail—she  _ recognized _ it. But she didn’t  _ just _ recognize it. 

She’d designed it.

_ Years _ ago, when she was maybe ten years old, sitting on the floor. Surrounded by her parents’ biology and anatomy textbooks splayed open, rolls and rolls of Granny’s blueprints, some annotated in Winry’s careful print.

Growing up an only child growing up in the only inhabited house on the outskirts of Resembool with only Granny and Den for company had made her studious and steadfast. She’d examined anatomical sketches of shoulder joints for unending hours; she’d spent weeks in front of the bathroom mirror, shifting her arms back and forth. Over and over until she’d perfected the angles on the three plates that should curve over the deltoid and round out in a trio of circular settings. 

Automail that replicated the easy, natural motions of human limbs, mimicked them in their entirety. She’d even drawn fingernails on those blueprints, made her case to Granny: how could you open a can or peel a sticky label off a box without fingernails? You couldn’t just leave them off. This was someone’s  _ right hand. _

Before she’d taken a hard left into military-grade combat automail and  _ then _ a sharp right into methods for cost reduction and longevity, all her designs had been like this:  _ human. _

How had she forgotten this design?

Red’s hand had extruded nails, little crescents that extended, just barely, from the curve of each finger. They were pressed at the cuticle, deceptively delicate-looking. Custom molds. Loving last.

She must have made some kind of noise, because Neil was looking at her expectantly, chewing on his lolly like a cow on its cud.

Winry bit the inside of her cheek, warring on what to say, what made  _ sense. _ In the end, she caved. “I just realized, Red’s automail… well. I designed something  _ just  _ like it, once.”

“What?” Neil looked between her and the arm for a long moment. “You think somebody stole your designs?”

“Who’d steal blueprints from a sheep town?” Winry asked, genuinely perplexed. “But if Granny used my old designs, she’d have mentioned it.”

“Maybe it’s just coincidence, then?”

Winry thumbed over the black cable exposed at Red’s inner elbow. “A  _ crazy _ coincidence,” she said. 

But it couldn’t be; it was more than the design. Now that she’d begun to see it, it was undeniably  _ there,  _ in every inch, each angle, even the pattern of knotting on the internal wires and the way the central piston was welded from a forty-five degree angle grip—that was  _ her _ trick. It was  _ her _ arm.

It  _ was, _ inexplicably so. There was a confused certainty settling in her gut, a throb at the back of her skull. Abruptly, she pushed away.

Neil shot her a concerned glance and pulled the lolly from his mouth. “You alright?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m not… I’m not really feeling well.”

“You didn’t catch anything from Red, did you?”

Winry shook her head absently, and wondered.

* * *

Unless Pat nagged him about it, Neil didn’t lock the workshop at night.

“Who’s gonna break in?” He’d rolled his eyes at Pat about it on Winry’s second night. “Red? He can barely hop three steps in that state.”

And apparently, it wasn’t a battle Pat cared too much to fight. “If you start missing bolts and shit, that’s your problem.”

But it was this tidbit that allowed Winry to slip back in during the gray half-light hours when the word ‘morning’  _ could _ , debatably, be used, if one were generous. She’d tugged on a pair of magnifying goggles and examined both Red’s limbs millimeter by millimeter, sticking with it until her vision began glazing over. And still she had nothing to show for it.

A glance at the clock showed it was edging up on six. Maybe she should just throw in the towel and try to get a few hours of sleep before Neil showed up.

Her head hit the wood with a sturdy  _ thunk. _ Several blueprints, disturbed by the quake, fluttered to the ground. Winry groaned and tried to shuffle the rest into a tidier pile but only managed to knock them off the table entirely. She sat back up with a sigh, and something caught her eye. It had been there for days, piled beside the phone, innocuous until now: Red’s clothing, washed, dried, folded. At the top was his black undershirt. 

Suddenly, she felt like an idiot. What if he had an identification card somewhere in there? Well, whoever washed his things probably would’ve spotted it, but still. She should’ve at least checked.

They’d cut the undershirt off for surgery, so it was little more than a flimsy vest now. A sewing machine could make it functional again, but making it _nice_ was another story entirely. His black overshirt had avoided the same treatment, though it still had a couple poignant holes. She discarded both and reached for his namesake coat. 

When she gave it a shake, a handful of small metal pieces rained to the ground, startling her enough to scatter Red’s belongings and a few screwdrivers too, most of it clattering to the ground noisily enough to make her wince.  _ “Shit.” _

But nobody came running. She exhaled, trying to calm her heartbeat, and swept up the things that had fallen out of Red’s coat: six earrings, four silver hoops and two blue studs, like carbon copies of her own. They sat heavy in her hand for a long moment before she jolted and slammed them onto the table.

Okay. So Red liked jewelry. Didn’t matter that he had earrings that were  _ just like hers. _

His pants— _ were those things leather oh my god they absolutely  _ were _ leather _ —had landed with a decidedly too-solid  _ clunk.  _ She discovered the reason as she picked them up: a pocket watch, and a hefty one at that. Past the point of practicality, Winry thought, until she turned it over. 

It was emblazoned with a dragon and wreathed in leaves, the design overlaid with a vertical diamond and elongated hexagon. Any Amestrian would recognize it instantly, but  _ especially  _ one employed by the military. That went double for someone whose direct superior was a State Alchemist.

Red had a State Alchemist’s watch clipped to his belt loop.

She turned it over a few times. The seam was marred by minute transmutation marks, the edges blended together so there was nothing to even dig her nails into. Red probably had to chalk out a transmutation circle whenever he so much as wanted to check the time. That kind of drama made sense from Mr. Mustang, or even Mr. Armstrong, but with Red, it surprised her.

If nothing else, the watch explained how Red had come to transmute his wounds shut; Winry wasn’t sure an average alchemist would come up with the idea, let alone be able to do it before bleeding out. She was pretty sure Mr. Mustang’s extensive training was the only reason he’d been able to do that kind of bullshit before.

Then again, Mr. Mustang probably wasn’t a good measuring stick for your average alchemist. Besides being the “Hero of Ishval”, was the youngest State Alchemist in history, which just as well labeled him a prodigy—

  
Winry paused. Red was  _ definitely _ younger than Mr. Mustang. It wasn’t even a contest. Wouldn’t Mr. Mustang have complained up a storm if his record was broken? For him to stay mum seemed out of character, to say the least. 

Chewing on her lip, Winry turned the watch over again. If he’d come by this watch the legal way, he must’ve been certified recently. Like,  _ really _ recently. Which almost made sense, aside from the lack of  _ news _ about it; surely somebody would’ve started talking if a State Alchemist  _ her  _ age had been approved by Führer Bradley; you only look at the way the papers never got over  _ her  _ hiring to realize just how weird it was.

She stood slowly and brushed the last papers off the workshop phone before dialing a number she knew by heart. Despite the early hour, the voice that answered was alert.

Winry’s voice was hushed by instinct. “Hi Mr. Hughes, it’s me. Can you look into something for me?”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "mostly done," I said when I posted the first part. of course, that didn't account for the fact I'd decide to reorder a bunch of events in parts 2-4, so. whoops? ^^;


End file.
